


The Case For Shinji Matou

by twodimensionaltrash



Series: The Chaldea Collection [8]
Category: Fate/stay night & Related Fandoms
Genre: Character Study, Implied/Referenced Abuse, Implied/Referenced Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, Implied/Referenced Character Death, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, Implied/Referenced Domestic Violence, Implied/Referenced Rape/Non-con
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-14
Updated: 2020-10-14
Packaged: 2021-03-08 20:08:29
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,642
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27002506
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/twodimensionaltrash/pseuds/twodimensionaltrash
Summary: An analysis of the character Shinji Matou. Not-quite-apologism for his actions, but an assessment of his motivations and the events leading to his actions in Fate/Stay Night. (Originally posted to Tumblr July 2019.)
Series: The Chaldea Collection [8]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1145015
Comments: 2
Kudos: 3





	The Case For Shinji Matou

**Author's Note:**

> I thought I shared this on here last year but originally didn't think that it had a place on AO3. My homies and I are shitposting about it on Discord and I decided that this does, in fact, belong here. 
> 
> I stand by everything I said in this. The sentiment at the heart of this is that Shinji's actions are objectively WRONG and I wanted to explore WHY he did them. He's an interesting character that was just as much a victim of Zouken as Sakura was. That shit gets overlooked way too frequently and it bothers me, especially because of all the Sakura apologists that do not see the irony.
> 
> Anyway, you can now have access to this in far-more-readable-terms here on AO3!

At long last, the much-needed character deconstruction that this fandom needs, because I haven’t found another one this thorough despite FSN being 15 years old.

This is not a defense or justification of Shinji Matou’s actions in Fate/Stay Night, but an analysis that looks past the surface of those actions and seeks to explain why.

This is 1658 words long and formatted in a lot of bullet points, so I’m doing you a favor by putting it under the cut.

 **Sections:**

  * Brief Matou Family History
  * Shinji As A Matou
  * Shinji As A Person
  * Conclusion



* * *

##  **Brief Matou Family History**

  * The Zolgen magus lineage is over 500 years old.
    * The Zolgen name became known as Makiri when the patriarch, Makiri Zolgen, changed his name to Zouken Makiri.
    * As the Makiri the entire family was chased out of Russia. Makiri was changed to Matou after emigrating to Japan.
    * Zouken Makiri, known as Zouken Matou since emigrating, has been patriarch for at least 500 years by the 5th Holy Grail War of Fate/Stay Night.
  * ~200 years prior to Fate/Stay Night the bloodline started declining. Less reproduction, and children weren’t developing magic circuits. Family claimed it was because they were ‘incompatible with the spiritual land of Fuyuki’ but the actual reason was never given.
    * Around this time Zouken Matou became obsessed with the idea of an unimaginable utopia beyond human reach. His relentless pursuit is his reason to exist. He was ~300 years old at this point, and he established the Holy Grail War.
  * The Matou family developed the Master-Servant system of the Heaven’s Feel ritual along with the Tohsaka and Einzbern families. They also created Command Spells for Masters to use in the ritual. HGWs were not created to be as they are at the time of Fate/Zero and Fate/Stay Night.
  * Matou’s Magic Crest stopped being passed down generations ago. Their heritage and magecraft are recorded in books and [passed through Crest Worms](https://t.umblr.com/redirect?z=https%3A%2F%2Ftypemoon.fandom.com%2Fwiki%2FMagic_Crest%23Crest_Worms&t=YzgxOWE0MjNkOTNlMTlmNGQwYjI1NzRlN2QwMzIxYjk3MWVjOWUzNyxyWU9reTJKNA%3D%3D&b=t%3AkY1gVll64-1nx6ihPbAGLQ&p=https%3A%2F%2Fnovelelitist.tumblr.com%2Fpost%2F186339170601%2Fa-case-for-shinji-matou&m=1&ts=1602649366). Magecraft is taught by carving thaumaturgy into the body with Crest Worms, which is as successful as it is disgusting.
  * At the time of Fate/Zero, the only known remaining Matou family members are Zouken, Kariya, Byakuya, and Shinji.



##  **Shinji As A Matou**

  * **Grandfather - Zouken:** The cold, uncaring grandfather Shinji has strived his entire life to please, hoping to become heir to the Matou magecraft and repair the broken family line.
  * **Uncle - Kariya:** In Hollow Ataraxia, Shinji refers to Kariya as “his father’s brother.” Byakuya and Kariya never had a familial relationship. Byakuya felt no sympathy watching him suffer.
  * **Sister - Sakura:** Adopted by Zouken to give the family a suitable heir. The icon of Byakuya’s disgrace and Shinji’s inadequacy.
  * **Father - Byakuya:** A broken man long before he’s introduced in Fate/Zero.
    * Zouken is registered as his father despite being 500 years old; biological parents aren’t in the picture. Who knows if they exist?
    * Byakuya is the oldest of two, with some magecraft ability. He wasn’t suitable to be heir, so Zouken prepared Kariya to do it. Kariya rejected Zouken, leaving Byakuya to be Zouken’s puppet by default. Byakuya was neglected, mistreated, and shamed.
    * When Byakuya and his wife produced a son without mage ability, the Matou were disgraced further. They were the end of the Matou lineage. His wife was fed to Crest Worms as punishment.
    * Alcoholism was his coping mechanism for the depression that came from acting as Zouken’s hand and living under his “father’s” rule. He neglected, mistreated, and shamed Shinji.
  * **“Heir” - Shinji:** The anti-hero of his own story, doomed to never amount to anything as a magus or as a man.
    * Shinji was sent overseas for school after Sakura was adopted. He received no magecraft training, and everything he learned was studied on his own.
    * He is skilled in alchemy, but the condition of his magic circuits don’t allow him to do much on his own. Shinji has atrophied magic circuits, meaning they degenerated from the time he was a child and were made near-useless by the lack of training. In Unlimited Blade Works, those circuits burst open when Ilya’s heart is forced into his chest and he is used as a vessel for the Holy Grail.
    * As the elder sibling and male of the Matou family, Shinji should be the rightful heir to Matou magecraft. His uncle rejected the responsibility. His father sits as figurehead to keep Zouken out of the public eye.
    * Shinji gets Sakura dropped on him when he returns from being educated overseas. A girl he doesn’t know arrives in his family and has already been trained in the magecraft he was supposed to inherit.
    * Zouken has treated the Matou family members as objects for centuries, and women as breeders and toys. Shinji views Sakura as his property, a husk of a person that can be utilized however he sees fit. He treats her as a tool that he can use to better improve his own position, leading him to holding the false Command Spells and having a history of abusing her in Fate/Stay Night. To Shinji, Zouken, and even Sakura, Shinji’s behavior is not unwarranted abuse, but an expectation.
    * Sakura has taken on the duty of a Matou woman and a Matou magus, which provides Shinji with conflicting feelings on how he’s supposed to interact with her.



##  **Shinji As A Person**

Now that you have his family’s history and his home environment, we can take Shinji’s experiences and make connections. This would be his character as others would see him before the 5th HGW of Fate/Stay Night.

**Big Negative Things And Consequences**

  * His inadequacy complex leads him to paranoia; any amount of success from people “below him” is a threat to his standing. He takes out these insecurities on other people.
    * Shirou admires Shinji and Shinji takes advantage of this. Shirou is treated like a pet or plaything starting with the 5th HGW, though this was not the case before Fate/Stay Night.
    * Sakura is a victim of abuse at Shinji’s hand that is not new by the time Fate/Stay Night starts. She sees herself as subservient to him, but he still goes out of his way to keep her below him.
    * Rin is an object of interest to him, but when she shuts him down he turns on her. Shinji hates dealing with Rin on a personal level, but he loves the idea of conquering her, leading him to bind her to the chair and feel her up in UBW.
    * Rider is on the receiving end of similar treatment to Sakura while Shinji holds the False Command Spells. He shows no regard for her well-being or dignity, pushing her to her limits in even small skirmishes in hopes of proving himself.
  * He has a toxic patriarchal mindset courtesy of Matou family tradition.
    * In addition to abusing Sakura, Shinji takes advantage of the attention that girls give him for being attractive, intelligent, and athletic. He believes he is entitled to this.



**Big Positive Things And Outcomes**

  * He is likable.
    * The young ladies at school are wooed by his charisma… unless they see him beyond the facade. The girls on the archery team can poke fun at him. He brushes this off with ease.
    * Well-timed wit and easy laughter shows he is of good humor. It’s often at the expense of others, which is done to deflect attention from his negative traits. He can’t take a joke about himself.
    * An outgoing personality that can disarm others with suaveness makes him a figure to be admired. The archery team, Shirou in particular, knows better. In each route Shirou is confused by Shinji’s bravado behavior but doesn’t call him out on it, instead choosing to brush it off to not embarrass his friend.
    * Being attractive helps.
  * He is intelligent. Shinji sits near the top of the class during the school year. He speaks in a manner not common for public school students. That can be attributed to both his own natural charisma and the years of boarding school overseas.
  * He is dedicated.
    * Shinji is the best shot on the school’s archery team next to Shirou and takes the sport seriously. When Shirou starts disappearing from practices, Shinji alienates him from the group. He believes that someone who won’t give their all doesn’t deserve to participate.
    * During Heaven’s Feel, Shinji uses his self-researched alchemy knowledge on his own time to create a pseudo-pheromone that will trigger the Crest Worms in Sakura’s body. If the labels on the bottles represent trial numbers, there are over 600 attempts at this.
    * When Shinji fails in any Fate/Stay Night route, he begs for another chance to keep trying instead of giving up. This includes crawling on the ground and pleading with Zouken to keep the False Command Spells after his loss to Shirou and Saber.
  * He wants to succeed. Above all else, Shinji wants to be worthy of the Matou name and prove Zouken wrong. He wants to improve. He wants to succeed and fulfill the duties he believes he was born to. This is a matter of responsibility to Shinji, and because he’s shut down at every turn it’s become a problem for his self-concept, self-esteem, and self-worth.



##  **Conclusion**

At last, the section you’re going to scroll down for without reading the rest of this, making your opinion on my many hours of work completely invalid. Here lies the answer to the question that inspired this deconstruction: “Where is the Shinji that Shirou admires at the start of Fate/Stay Night?”

I could list more positive and negative traits, or go into detail about the psychology behind all of this until I’m blue in the face; it wouldn’t do any good if you don’t already get what I’ve explained above.

The 5th HGW might have pushed him over the edge, but he’s still where he’s always been. He’s just… going through some stuff.


End file.
